A class-action lawsuit filed on Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Medford, Ore., accuses Pacific Seafood Group and its owner, Frank Dulcich, of violating federal antitrust laws by monopolizing four West Coast seafood markets: Dungeness crab, coldwater shrimp, groundfish and whiting.
Submitted by father-and-son fishermen Lloyd and Todd Whaley of Brookings, Ore., the suit claims the Clackamas, Ore.-based seafood supplier, one of the country’s largest, strong-armed the West Coast seafood market by buying out processing competitors, sitting on empty or unused parcels of waterfront, assembling its own fishing fleet to compete with independent fishermen and suppressing prices paid to fishermen by as much as 50 percent.
The suit, which is open to more than 3,000 fishermen and vessel owners, seeks damages of up to USD 520 million (EUR 424 million) for seven different illegal anti-competitive tactics occurring between June 2006 and the present.
Pacific Seafood immediately responded to the suit, calling it baseless.
“The claims filed against Pacific Seafood are completely without merit,” said Craig Urness, the company’s general counsel, in a prepared statement. “This lawsuit includes gross misrepresentations and we plan to aggressively defend against the allegations. Pacific Seafood has a long history on the Oregon coast. For more than 25 years, we’ve prided ourselves on providing value, service and jobs on the Oregon coast to our partners in the fishing and seafood industries and we will continue this commitment into the future.”
The Whaleys are represented by Michael Haglund of Haglund Kelley Horngren Jones & Wilder in Portland, Ore.
“The whole goal of this case is to stop the battery of illegal anti-competitive tactics that Pacific Seafoods has used, and continues to use,” Haglund told The Daily Astorian on Tuesday. “We want to recover the damages that they’ve inflicted on fishermen in the last four years, break up this network of companies into smaller units and restore open competition to the seafood industry on the West Coast.”
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